I just read in today’s paper, the pomegranates are in! I know I’ll be scurrying down to my local market and picking up a wad of them. (Pomegranates come in wads, right? Or is it whacks?) Of course, they’ll be heavy for their size, because I know my pomegranates. (Hey! What’s with these pomegranates? They made outta Styrofoam® or sumpin’?)
But I did just learn something about the lovely and tallented (You can eat them as a fruit, use them as a garnish or squeeze them for juice. It’s a miracle food!) pomegranate. You can keep them in your fridge for, like, two months. Wow, THAT little bit of info would have helped out last year, let me tell you!
But watch the pips. You eat one of those bad boys and you gotta spend three months in Hades. Every year!
And yesterday was Jan “Madge the Manicurist” Miner’s birthday. She turned 85. It’s too late for the card, but you could soak in something in her honor.
-Rue.
Gee, I had a nice long soak in the tub last night and didn’t even know it was “Madge’s” birthday. I didn’t soak in Palmolive dishwashing liquid, so maybe that doesn’t count. I soaked in something that said it was ginger scented therapeutic bath crystals. I bought it last week at Big Lots. They also had my favorite shower gel at Big Lots. It’s called Indulgence and it’s kinda grapefruit scented. I’ve never seen anything pomegranate scented, tho. Pomegranates are fun to peel and eat. I can waste a coupla hours peeling and eating a pomegranate. Oh, and I had some homemade pomegranate jelly last year. I didn’t make it. A nice lady who likes me made it and gave me a jar. It was sooooo good. Maybe nice lady will make some this year and give me another jar. I gave the jar back to her when it was empty cause it’s one of those jars used for canning. That oughta earn me some pomegranate jelly points, right?
Aren’t pomegranates the kind of thing that have to be fed to you while you’re reclining, fanned by scantily-clad slave boys? If not, they should be. Any time I can eat in a reclined mode while being fanned my scantily-clad young lads, well, life is good. Not that I’d know, but I imagine. [sub] Anyone wanna help me see how good my imagination is??[/sub]
I vaguely recall having pomegranates once when I was a kid. I remember that the juice stained everything. I think I must have liked them because I had stains all over my hands and clothes. Either that or it was another senseless pomegranate slaughter that I managed to blank out of my memory.
One of my favorite, yet heartbreaking, memories involves pomegranates…
It was three autumns ago, I shared a pomegranate with a new lover. He carefully peeled it and fed the seeds to me while we sat at my kitchen table in the candleglow. I remember so clearly the look on his face as he offered each succulent, ruby-red seed to me. I put one or two in my wine glass and admired the lovely scarlet glow the wine took on with the candlelight shining through the glass. Afterwards we shared a bath and then adjourned upstairs and made love for the first time.
A year later it was all over, the relationship had ended very badly, but now each autumn my heart hurts anew remembering the loveliness of that mythical fruit and the sweet but bitter memories of my old flame…
Growing up, we had a pomegranate tree. Plenty of pomegranates, all the time. The neighborhood kids would crawl over into our back yard and steal them. But we still had more pomegranates than we needed. Many of them ended up falling to the ground and rotting.
To be honest, I took them for granted. I mean, doesn’t everyone have pomegranate trees in their backyard? What’s the big deal?
We had a fig tree in our back yard when I was growing up. Lots of figs. Sweet, delectable figs. My husband has planted two or three fig trees in our back yard here…but the dogs always sit on them! We also tried a cherry tree. One of our dogs ATE the cherry bark! I thought only deer did that.
But this has me thinking…I want to do a cornucopia centerpiece for Thanksgiving, with (fake) autumn leaves and (real) harvest fruits…a pomegranate would be good in it. And we can eat it afterwards.
That’s the whole problem with them: too much work with too little return. I dislike putting that much effort into my food.
Maybe this is what being an adult means 'cause I sure loved them as a kid. I would get a whole mouthful of the seeds, suck all the juice off them and them spit them out machine gun style. That was fun.
I had the best pomegranate ever the other day. I bought another one the next day and it was equally amazing. I could easily eat four of those a day. If I were a poet I would write an ode to that fruit. The experience of ripping them open and discovering those delicious little ruby seeds is ectasy. The only problem is that they cost $1.99 each around here.
I’m confused - what’s a pip? Don’t tell me it’s the crunchy white part in the middle of the seed. If you’re one of those people who spits those out, you don’t deserve the fruit.
I had forgotten my childhood delight with pomegranates. I’m gonna buy a couple today.
When I was a kid in Texas, our next door neighbor had both a fig tree and a pomegranate bush. I must have been a real pest because I couldn’t get enough of either. Had to fight the damn mockingbirds over the figs, though.
I just yesterday got my hands on a recipe for pomegranate jelly, so I’m going to buy some today and make it up for Christmas presents. I thought the bright red jelly would look pretty in jars with holly-print designs on the lid. Unfortunately, it takes about 10 pomegranates to make 3 pints worth, so I’m going to be spending a lot of time squashing the pips to get juice.
Hint from Heloise: peel pomegranates in a very big bowl of water. The rind and stuff sinks; the seeds float, and it’s way easy to do, much faster than out of water.
